Thursday, March 10, 2011

Apocalypse

I had a nightmare last night.

***

Everything seemed normal at first. I was at my father's house, and he lives in a suburb where everyone's lawns are green and perfect. And that's exactly how it felt while I was there. Everything was quiet and peaceful. Then, I saw something. It was running after me, deformed. Mutant is the only word to really describe it. It was similar to a zombie, disfigured and decayed, but the skin was completely red, like that of a burn victim. And it's face was melted. I don't remember if I fought it off, or if I just ran from it, but eventually, I was pounding at my neighbors door. It was a friends house that I used to play with when I would visit my dad on the weekends. I begged for her to let me in the house, and she hesitated. She didn't want to open the door. The house was her fortress, and letting me in would risk letting in the creature. But she couldn't watch me die. So she opened the door. Inside were people I knew. I couldn't tell you who they were if I tried, but I know I knew them. But the world was no longer bright and happy. Inside the house, I felt like we were in a stone cellar. The walls were grey and I felt cold. I remember sitting there with my girlfriend, holding her hand. I had learned that there had been an apocalypse. Those creatures were mutated from it. People we had once knew, but were no longer human. They followed the rules of zombies, I'm sure. Anyone bitten or scratched would slowly become mutated themselves.

I don't know how much time had passed in the dream...but I remember someone being pregnant. I remember looking at a television set, and the baby being on the screen, kind of like a sonogram, but not really. We saw something inside of him. Green. Life. That's the only way to describe it. When the baby was born, one of the survivors in the house tried to kill him. For some reason, he didn't want use to cure the disease plaguing the world. But this was one of those things in dreams that was either unimportant, quickly forgotten, or forgotten once I woke up, because I do not recall what happened with him. The next thing I remember, was being somewhere else. The mutants were so close to us, we had just escaped them. We were inside another stone building, but there were trees growing inside and there were green markings everywhere, glowing bright. The markings had grown like roots from the trees, across the ground, and there were mutant bodies laying on the floor, lifeless. This sanctuary held the key to putting the world back the way it was. It held the cure, and the redemption of mankind.

I don't know how we did it, but I remember us living is simple villages. It was close to medieval times, but without the castles and knights. I remember straw buildings, a campfire, and a peaceful village. It was as if we had all learned a lesson, like we knew not to cause war or fight. But, with everything that had happened so far, I wouldn't consider it to have been a nightmare...if it wasn't for what happened next.

Time had been fast forwarded again. This time, life was back to the way it was before the apocalypse. I was in the kitchen of my current house. Then I remember staring at a TV screen, playing a video game, I believe, the text was similar to a Nintendo 64 Zelda game. And through it...Satan was talking to me? He was saying something evil and creepy, which had scared me in my dream, and then God was talking to me too. (Now, I'm not overly religious, as the context of my dream might suggest, but for some reason this is what happened) After that, I remember running to my basement with my mother, and she told me to get under the blanket. I hid under a comforter, and that's when I began to feel it. I was being burned alive. We all were. After all this time of living in peace, after everything we had went through to save the world from the first apocalypse, it was happening all over again. I don't know why. But I remember feeling trapped, as the heat of the entire world was burning down on me. With nothing to shield me from the flames, except my comforter. Oddly, though, it had been enough. I had survived...again. I'm not sure if I wanted to, but I had.